Red Sox payroll pays off in so many ways

Money well spent. On Mike Lowell, whose salary Boston was willing to swallow in a trade for Josh Beckett and became the second World Series Most Valuable Player in franchise history. On Beckett himself, a Florida fire sale find who delivered one of the most dominating postseason pitching performances in baseball history.

On Daisuke Matsuzaka, who won 15 games in the regular season and got better as the playoffs went along. And on Curt Schilling, reeled in with an unprecedented World Series bonus on which he delivered double.

"A lot of people worked really hard to get to this point," general manager Theo Epstein said in the clubhouse after the Red Sox beat the Colorado Rockies 4-3 on Sunday night to complete the Series sweep. "We made mistakes, but we always believed in the process."

After missing the playoffs last year for the first time in Epstein's tenure, the Red Sox opened the season with a $143 million payroll, second only to the New York Yankees, and tens of millions more than the next extravagant spender.

"Come on, we've got guys out here who don't make anything," first baseman Kevin Youkilis said. "We have three starters right now that are league minimum. Payroll this and that, whatever. It's not a big deal. We went out there and won with guys making the league minimum. There's a lot of payrolls that are high like ours and didn't win."

One of them is New York, which spent more than $1 billion since winning its last World Series title.

Boston has two in four years and the pieces in place for more.

"We have a big payroll, but there are other teams that have big payrolls that haven't had the success," owner Tom Werner said. "And a big part of the success are the other guys who had some of the biggest hits for us."

Boston's payroll allowed it to take chances on a player like Lowell, who was coming off a down-year and making $9 million annually. As he stood in the infield accepting the MVP trophy and a new car, fans behind the Red Sox dugout began to chant, "Re-sign Lowell."

The payroll also allowed the team to take on more salaries with midseason reinforcements like Bobby Kielty, who hit the game-clinching homer in the eighth.

"I couldn't ask for a better place to get picked up," said Kielty, who was waived by Oakland. "This is the best team I've ever played for. We are the world champions."

That's also because of a player development staff — the Red Sox spend freely on that, too — that drafted Game 4 winner Jon Lester, Kevin Youkilis, Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia and Jonathan Papelbon from a sea of eligible prospects and guided them to the majors.

"A lot of guys weren't here for" the 2004 championship, said Lester, who pitched 5 2-3 innings of shutout ball in the clincher. "Hopefully, we'll be doing this a lot more, getting to the playoffs and having a lot of fun."

Ellsbury started the season in Double-A, played in just 33 regular-season games for Boston and didn't crack the lineup until late in the AL championship series. He hit .438 in the World Series, with four doubles. Pedroia batted .317 as a rookie and had seven hits in three games as Boston rallied from a 3-1 deficit in the ALCS.

You watch the veterans act like little kids, and then you see the young kids starting to act like veterans," Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. "It's gratifying."

It was money well-spent, too, on Julio Lugo, who didn't hit like a $9 million player during the year but did in the postseason to supplement defense that was very, very good.

Even on J.D. Drew, whose five-year, $70 million contract weighed on the organization like an albatross until he started hitting when they needed it: in Game 6 of the AL championship series, with the Red Sox facing elimination.

On a scouting department that knew when to pick Matt Holliday off first, when to shade the left fielder to his right, when to swing at the first pitch and when to take it.

"We had four scouts following the Rockies," Werner said. "That all paid off."